黑洞有朋友吗?

黑洞有朋友吗?

"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light."

“我宁愿与朋友在黑暗中同行，也不愿独自在光明中行走。”

When she expressed that thought back in the early 20th century, American author Helen Keller was probably referring to "like-hearted" people.

当美国作家海伦·凯勒在20世纪初表达这一想法时，她可能指的是“有爱心的”人。

But it turns out, those may be words to live by — quite literally — for black holes.

但事实证明，这些可能是黑洞赖以生存的词汇。

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, is estimated to contain about 4.5 million times the mass of our sun. (Photo: NASA/CXC/Stanford/I. Zhuravleva et al. [Public domain]/Wikipedia Commons)

Consider Sagittarius A*, or simply Sgr A* — the Milky Way galaxy's supermassive black hole-in-residence. Cramming a mass of around 4 million suns into a region about the size of the space between the Earth and the sun, it lives squarely at the heart of our galaxy.

考虑一下人马座A*，或者简单的Sgr A*——银河系的超大质量黑洞。它的质量约为400万个太阳，挤进了地球和太阳之间的空间大小的区域，正好位于我们银河系的中心。

But it was assumed that, aside from the retinue of stars that surround it, this galactic carnivore lived in solitude.

但据推测，除了它周围的恒星随从，这种银河系食肉动物生活在孤独中。

After all, who wants to hang out with a black hole?

毕竟，谁愿意和黑洞在一起?

They're unrepentant gluttons at the dinner table. And definitely not fun at parties.

他们是餐桌上不知悔改的贪吃者。而且在派对上绝对不好玩。

But someone may put up with them. And that someone could be another black hole.

但有人可能会容忍他们。那个人可能是另一个黑洞。

According to a scholarly article published in arXiv, the star cluster surrounding Sgr A* indicates another dark influence at work — the gravitational pull of a smaller, but still massive, void lurking in the shadows.

根据发表在arXiv杂志上的一篇学术文章，围绕Sgr a *的星系团表明了另一种黑暗的影响在起作用——隐藏在阴影中的一个更小但仍然巨大的真空的引力。

"Based on what we've seen, my colleagues and I show that if there is a friend there, it might be a second black hole nearby that is at least 100,000 times the mass of the Sun," study co-author Smadar Naoz, an astrophysicist at the University of California, writes in LiveScience.

“基于我们所看到的,我和我的同事们表明,如果有一个朋友,也许是第二个黑洞附近,至少是太阳质量的100000倍,”这项研究的合作者Smadar Naoz,加利福尼亚大学的天体物理学家,在《生活科学》中写道。

That would make the heart of our galaxy — already a place of high intrigue and drama — even more complicated. The black holes would be locked into a kind of gravitational dance. They would orbit each other, while simultaneously tugging at nearby stars in their orbits.

这将使我们银河系的心脏——已经是一个充满阴谋和戏剧性的地方——变得更加复杂。黑洞会被锁定在一种引力舞蹈中。它们会相互环绕，同时拉着轨道上邻近的恒星。

The tell-tale heart of our galaxy is actually a star known as S0-2. It's close enough to Sgr A* to provide scientists with all kinds of information about its all-consuming neighbor — without actually being on the menu. Instead, S0-2 whips around Sgr A* at speeds of more than 16 million miles per hour. When the star passes too close to the black hole, its light stretches and shifts into the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum — a validation of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

银河系的心脏其实是一颗被称为S0-2的恒星。它与Sgr A*非常接近，可以为科学家提供所有关于它的所有邻居的各种信息，而不需要真正出现在菜单上。相反，S0-2在Sgr A*附近以超过1600万英里每小时的速度疾驰。当恒星太靠近黑洞时，它发出的光就会延伸并转移到电磁波谱的红色部分——这是对爱因斯坦广义相对论的验证。

By studying that shift in light, Naoz and her colleagues might be able to detect another hand pulling S0-2's strings. But it would be a much smaller hand. Because, so far, they haven't been able to note its effect on SO-2's orbit.

通过研究光的这种移动，Naoz和她的同事们可能能够探测到另一只手在拉动S0-2的弦。但它会是一只更小的手。因为到目前为止，他们还没有注意到它对so -2轨道的影响。

"But that doesn't mean that a smaller companion black hole cannot still hide there," Naoz notes. "Such an object may not alter the orbit of SO-2 in a way we can easily measure."

“但这并不意味着一个较小的伴生黑洞仍然不能隐藏在那里，”Naoz指出。“这样一个物体可能不会以我们可以轻易测量的方式改变SO-2的轨道。”

Instead, the research team is focusing on gravitational waves that would be emitted by two massive black holes orbiting each other. But to pick up on those extremely low-frequency ripples in space, they will have to wait until the space-based detector known as LISA, or Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, is launched in 2034.

相反，研究小组正专注于由两个相互环绕的巨大黑洞发出的引力波。但要捕捉到太空中那些极低频的涟漪，他们必须等到2034年发射的LISA太空探测器，即激光干涉仪太空天线。

Then we might know for certain if these cold, remote chasms in space and time have any friends.

那么，我们就可以肯定地知道，这些空间和时间上寒冷遥远的裂缝是否有朋友。